Fading beauty and battleaxe tyrants

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Should women be appointed trade commissioners? It's fine while
they're young and attractive, but once beauty fades they'll
probably have a breakdown or turn into "something of a battleaxe"
and "tyrant".

If International Women's Day brought on a rant about boys'
clubs, then consider the above sentiments, courtesy of public
servants circa 1963, and reflect on how far we've come.

A departmental minute, displayed this month at Canberra's
National Archives, reveals how brazenly the bureaucrats once
decried the prospect of women in their ranks.

"Even after some deliberation, it is difficult to find reasons
to support the appointment of women Trade Commissioners," wrote A.
R. Taysom to boss K. L. Le Rossignol, director of Trade
Commissioner Services.

"In countries where publicity media is well developed, such as
North America and England and where there are no other major
drawbacks, such as the Islamic attitude towards women, a relatively
young, attractive woman could operate with some effectiveness, in a
subordinate capacity." If Australia had an important trade in
women's clothing and accessories, Mr Taysom continued, a woman
could prove more valuable than a man. But "even conceding these
points", he warns, "such an appointee would not stay young and
attractive for ever (sic) and... (may) become a problem".

Mr Taysom lists nine reasons for not hiring women commissioners,
including the difficulties they'd face eliciting information from
businessmen (the relationship would be more "formal and guarded on
both sides") and matters of character ("it is extremely doubtful"
women could cope with the job's long-term "strains and
stresses").

Single women tended to marry within five years, he explains,
while "a spinster lady can, and very often does, turn into
something of a battleaxe with the passing years". Mr Taysom ends
with a weary note from Mr Parkinson, a colleague from External
Affairs, who complains his superiors "lack courage to slam the door
because of parliamentary opinion, pressure groups and so on".

The panic appears to be in response to the planned appointment
of Freda Wilson as assistant trade commissioner to Los Angeles.

"My concern is not with the current proposed appointment as
such," Mr Le Rossignol writes later to deputy secretary A. T.
Carmody, attaching Mr Taysom's minute, "but the fact that it will
not be possible once the principle has been introduced to prevent
an unassessible (sic) number of appointments from here forward". He
notes that "there are any amount of young women graduates who would
be quite as competent at the trainee stage as the chaps we're
presently introducing to the Service".

Mr Le Rossignol concurs with Mr Taysom's reservations: "In some
cases, we've had no alternative but to dismiss women in their late
40s or early 50s who, although competent and efficient 10 years
ago, have turned into complete tyrants, demoralising other staff
members and frustrating the total office effort . . . On the other
hand, breakdowns in this age group are not uncommon - we've
pensioned one off in New York well before retiring age, and I
understand H. C. Menzies has another, age 51 or so, that he wants
us to do something about."

The minute refers to advice that only unmarried women could be
hired and lower, "female", rates would govern their salaries.

Historian Michael McKernan says the exchange reflects the
retreat from the wartime experience of women's workforce
participation. "The wage then was a man's wage and the expectation
was that the women were at home raising the children... So, they
thought: 'Not only are we hiring women but the only ones we can
hire are the worst ones - the spinsters'."

But some of their logic has a more contemporary resonance. "A
man normally has his household run efficiently by his wife, who
also looks after much of the entertaining," Mr Taysom said. "A
woman... would have all this on top of her normal work."